Master Inventor

“It’s part childhood dream and at the same time the history of aviation”. This is how Tó Quintas describes the mobile – a moving sculpture made up of various parts and suspended by cables – that he’s been building over the last few months.

Each part represents a particular (special) flight – like the piece modelled on the hydro-plane, «Lusitânia», the Fairey bi-plane in which aviators Sacadura Cabral and Gago Coutinho crossed the Atlantic in 1922. When complete, the mobile will also boast a racing plane from the 1920s, one of the first fighter planes with a jet engine and a piece alluding to the conquest of space. If all goes as planned, Tó Quintas hopes his public art project will be on display in the concourse of Faro Airport, next to the check-in desks, before the end of the year.

But this is just a peripheral project. His latest major creation is an innovative “doll” that remains upright and allows an actor with reduced mobility to perform on stage.

“It was an idea of José Louro” (something of a living legend on the Algarve theatrical scene) “and of Rui Cabrita” (a young actor based in São Bartolomeu de Messines) “to create an upright vehicle that could be used by a tetraplegic person. It works with the movement of the arms. It doesn’t need strength”, he explains.

“It took a look of working out, but in the end, it’s just the principles of Archimedes at work”. A machine like this “comes from studying balance. It’s actually a very ancient form of mechanism, simply adapted to scale. The tricky part was not making it too large, or too heavy, but making sure it was safe. The actor is “attached” with two straps. There’s no secret to it. It works by using gravity and the ratio between the weight of the occupant and four blocks of cement weighing 120 kilos. The result is movement, by swaying from side to side”, he reveals.

This is a perfect example of Tó Quintas’ genius that intriguingly, and irrespective of his talent, had to travel a long road before he could dedicate himself entirely to theatre set designs.

His skill and natural flair came “from my father’s side of the family. They were very hands-on people. They made their own furniture and were always building things. They didn’t think where would they buy something – they thought how could they make it.”

“When my brother and I were little, my mother used to keep us entertained by getting broken radios, or old switches and allowing us to take them apart in the kitchen. We were always encouraged to get busy with tools”.School didn’t go badly either, although things would have been a lot easier if he hadn’t been born left-handed. In Portugal before the 1974 Revolution “the thinking was that writing with one’s left hand was connected to Communism”, and therefore something to repress.

“The result was a huge amount of dyslexia. These days I manage to write with both hands, badly. I basically conceive things in pictures. It’s the basis of my reasoning. I find it relatively easy to think in 3D”.

At school as well as later at work, Tó Quintas always had a group of friends interested in model aircraft making, in constructing fireworks and little cars with engines using elastic bands. They even dismantled and soldered scooters.

He found himself working as a clerk at the Vilamoura Casino.

“Something that really had nothing to do with me”. “One day, I read an article in a magazine about “making a profession out of one’s hobby”. It got me very interested. I took a young businessperson’s course and then concentrated on the construction of maquettes for the building industry”.

In the 90s, business began to slow down. “So then I began making crafts and constructing models of typical Algarvian houses in gesso”. “The problem was that either I had to go industrial to become profitable, or I wouldn’t make any money. I spent the whole day constructing and painting little houses – and barely earnt enough money to pay the rent”, he smiled.

“So I stopped with all that and started making dental prosthetics. First the moulds, later the casting of the metals. As I had a huge “school of models”, I worked in this business for about a decade. It was very tiring”, he recalls.

“When SINCERA, and later ACTA appeared, they were desperate to find someone who could build their sets. Regular carpenters couldn’t get their heads round the differences in this kind of work”.

So, “in tandem, I began making sets. I had my workshop in the front room of my house”.

The founding of ACTA helped turn this sideline into “a solid activity” because previously in Faro and the Algarve “the theatre was seen as something run by crazy people – always associated with the irreverence of youth, the fringe”, he tells. “It wasn’t regarded as a profession. ACTA turned all this round”. In one of their first shows “Luís Vicente was worrying about the sets because everyone was giving him funny looks. He called me. We looked at each other – a little wary”, but from then on “there have been two or three plays every year which have given me regular work”.

But what’s the work like? “The question is always “how will the constructions be used on stage. Will they be messed about with? Will people jump on them? Do they have to open and shut? Or be dragged across the floor? How will they be used? And when all this is answered, one has to consider dimensions. We go on tour in the Algarve, so everything has to be portable, collapsible – and then there’s the question of image. I have to have ideas of the environment, colours and time that the piece seeks to represent”.

He works within a minimum time frame of two months. Time for “project conception” and the execution of ideas presented. Throughout his time with ACTA, Tó Quintas has delighted the members of the company that encourages total creative freedom.

One intriguing detail is that he doesn’t own a computer and rarely uses the Internet. “I have my own sources of information. I read, and observe a lot. I create my own mental terms of reference!” He explains.

Finally, we ask Tó Quintas how he sees himself. “Basically, I see myself as a person who makes useful things for other people. I consider myself a master-craftsman - someone with a huge accumulated knowledge of materials, forms and information – shaped in an unconventional fashion; self-taught”.